


Talk Your Way Out Of A Paper Bag

by LMTYL__Lye



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, In Media Res, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Precious Peter Parker, Smartass Eddie Brock, Swearing, The Avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 20:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMTYL__Lye/pseuds/LMTYL__Lye
Summary: “Well, something tells me the Avengers aren’t waiting to give me an exclusive interview, Mr. Stark.”Once again, Eddie Brock had gotten himself into some deep shit.





	Talk Your Way Out Of A Paper Bag

This was  _ not _ the first time Eddie Brock had been in a jail cell.  Even with the clean white walls and one massive pane of tempered glass, this was  _ definitely _ a jail cell.  Bare-bones bed, industrial-strength toilet, tiny sink, and a seriously heavy-duty door.  The presence of several well-recognized faces on the other side of the window confirmed that, once again, Eddie had gotten himself into some deep shit.

He pointedly avoided eye contact with any of them, instead taking inventory of himself.  A hospital gown and slippers, several large bandages, and thankfully the same pair of boxer shorts he remembered putting on… recently.  Eddie cautiously peeled up the edge of one bandage and, seeing no injury beneath, ripped off all of them. His audience started talking to each other, indistinct on his side of the glass.

“Ahem!” came a male voice over an intercom in his cell.

Eddie jerked involuntarily, briefly startled, and felt a deeper voice chuckle inside his skull.   _ Good, his asshole roommate is awake now, too _ .

“Mr. Brock,” came the voice again, “do you know why you’re here?”

He finally met the gaze of the dark-haired man in the middle of the group.

“Well, something tells me the Avengers aren’t waiting to give me an exclusive interview, Mr. Stark.”  That made the stockier man standing next to Tony Stark cover a laugh and nudge Stark in the side.

Stark gave Eddie an unamused look.  “Do you know why  _ we’re _ here?”

“To give me a phone, so I can call my lawyer?”  Eddie gave him a grin that hopefully, hopefully, only showed human teeth.  He could feel his Other sitting back, always amused by Eddie’s ability to manipulate other humans with mere words and body language, each word a perfectly sharpened tooth.   _ Yeah, and look where that’s gotten me before _ .

“Twelve hours ago,  _ we _ —” Stark gestured to his assembled teammates, “ _ we _ were investigating some sort of people-eating alien  _ monstrosity _ in beautiful San Francisco.  We found it, we fought it, and—get this—after hammering it with some sonic blasts and a couple flamethrowers, the damn thing up seems to shrink away to nothing!  There’s just some normal-looking, lightly-toasted dude laying there unconscious!”

Looking politely interested, Eddie mimed taking notes.  “Okay, and then what?”

The man next to Stark, whom Eddie was pretty sure was one Doctor Bruce Banner, could be heard laughing over the intercom before it cut off.  Stark himself looked on the verge of a stroke, veins in his forehead and neck visibly pulsing.  _ If we bit his head off, the spray would be amazing! _  Another dark laugh from the backseat.

Eddie was pretty sure that a majority of the adrenaline his body was producing right now wasn’t making it to his bloodstream.  Just a humble investigative reporter, sitting in his underwear, interviewing yet another rich asshole. A typical day at the office.

The only woman in the group, a petite bottle blonde dressed like a cartoon spy, put a hand on Stark’s shoulder and lead him out of view, returning a moment later, alone.  Eddie watched the rest of them talk, wishing he could hear, as they seemed to choose a new representative to talk to him.

Let’s see… could the guy with the beard be Captain America?  The guy dressed in robes like he came from ComicCon looked familiar as he put his gloved hands up, obviously declining.  Doctor Banner was explaining something to a muscular blond man who may or may not have been Thor.  _ That is one terrible haircut _ .

After several moments, during which arms were waved vigorously, Tony Stark wandered back in and was booted out again, and the cosplayer leaned against the wall with his hands over his face, Doctor Banner stepped forward and waved to get Eddie’s attention.

“Hey, so… don’t freak out,” Banner said, not quite as sincerely as a certain other doctor whom Eddie knew.  “You might’ve been exposed to some sort of… alien pathogen? During your investigation of the LIFE Foundation?  Your medical records from that time are—”

“Ugh, really?” Eddie raised an eyebrow at him.  “ _ This _ again?  So what,  _ the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes _ felt the need to whisk me away to some top-secret facility for a freaking  _ check-up _ ?”  The Other was having some sort of panic attack in Eddie’s stomach.   _ Calm down, big guy, let me handle this.  Stay out of sight _ .

Banner, now in Eddie’s verbal line of fire, tried to reply but stalled out.

“I thought you had a PhD in, like, astrophysics or something, Doctor Banner?”

Mr. Cosplay sighed and shooed Banner away from whatever invisible podium these guys kept stepping to when speaking to Eddie.

“Mr. Brock, I am Doctor Steven Strange.  I used to be a neurosurgeon, before I studied the mystic arts.  Now, I am the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth.”

Eddie sarcastically laughed and clapped his hands.  “That’s great, Doctor! I bet you’re a hit with the kids at parties!”

The blond muscleman barked out a laugh and clapped Strange on the shoulder.  “I told you!” he boomed, sounding very British.  _ Yeah, probably Thor _ .

Captain America and Spy Chick both looked  _ so done _ with all of this.

“Kid, wait, get back here!” came Stark’s distant voice, as yet another superhero bounced into view, Stark hot on his heels.

From the neck up, dorky teenage whitebread.  From the neck down, the outfit screamed ‘Spider-Man’.

“Oh wow, you’re Eddie Brock!” Spider-Kid gave him double finger-guns.  “We watch  _ The Brock Report _ in my Journalism class!”  The rest of Eddie’s audience did an unrehearsed, simultaneous face-palm.

“Hey hey, always good to meet a fan!”  Eddie returned the gesture with genuine friendliness.  “Dressin’ up like Spider-Man and hangin’ with the Avengers!  Bet all your classmates are jealous!”

“Actually, Mr. Brock, I—” Tony Stark clapped a hand over the kid’s mouth and dragged him away, with a look on his face that reminded Eddie of Anne.

Stark walked back in, alone.  “So, any progress?” Apparently, they’d all forgotten to turn off the intercom.  Spider-Kid crept back in, stuck to the ceiling, with only Thor and Spy Chick noticing.  Both of them just sorta shrugged and turned their attention back to Stark, Banner, and… did he say his name was ‘Strange’?

“I’m pretty sure we’re talking to a human, Tony,” said Banner, “but all of the second-degree burns have disappeared without a trace, and he’s not acting like someone with a concussion.  Maybe there’s some sort of super-human healing factor…”

“What, are you saying that monster  _ ate him _ , and we burned it away?  Completely?”

“We should do some scans to see if his anatomy is human,” said Strange.  “Is there an MRI here in the compound?”

Eddie let out an involuntary yelp, which got their attention.  “Shh, shh, calm down man, calm down.” Eddie hissed to himself.

Strange raised an eyebrow.  “Who are you talking to?”

“Wha?  No, no, just a bit claustrophobic, you know?  We don’t  _ do _ MRIs.”

“’We’?”

“ _ Shit _ .”

Strange was watching him like a hawk.   _ His eyes had flashed black again, didn’t they?  Shit! Think, Eddie, think! _

Thor shouted, startling them all.  “Stark! Do that think with the sound again!  Like what your armor can do!”

“No no no no no no no…”  Eddie, who had been sitting on the bed, jumped up and stepped to the window, watching Stark pull a smartphone out of his pocket.

“Oh, are you ready to take this seriously, Mr. Brock?”  Stark looked Eddie in the eyes as he tapped his phone.

PAIN.   **PAIN.**  PAIN!   **PAIN!**

And then, silence.

Panting, Eddie looked up, and saw that his captors all looked a little shocked and pale.  He stumbled back to the bed and sat down with a slump.

“I knew it!”  Thor broke the silence.  “That beast we fought was a  _ Klyntar _ !”

Stark was looking at his phone, mumbling about safety features.

“Where have I heard that before?”  Strange asked himself as he conjured some sort of swirling orange… portal?... and retrieved an exotic-looking book.  After a little flipping through the pages, he showed the book’s contents to Thor.

“ _ That?! _ ”

“Yes!  I haven’t seen one in centuries.”

Spy Chick came to look, too.  “So, how much of a threat are we talking?”

“Well, if the book is accurate, we’re facing a potential Class 5 apocalypse scenario.”

“Can you, I don’t know, be a little more  _ descriptive _ ?”  Stark was really handing out exasperated looks today.

“Worst-case scenario?  Extinction of all multicellular life on the planet.”

“Klyntar are a plague.  They will overrun entire worlds and move on when there’s nothing left worth consuming.” Thor added, dramatically.

“So… is Mr. Brock gonna be okay?”  Spider-Kid lowered himself upside-down to read over Strange’s shoulder, startling most of the Avengers.

**“We take care of each other.”**

The gravelly voice made the already-tense superheroes jump again.  Draped across Eddie’s shoulders was a lithe black creature whose blank white eyes and menacing teeth belonged at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.

“Avengers, meet Venom.  Vee, the Avengers.” Eddie was used to being stressed-out.  The symbiote was feeling backed into a corner, ready to lash out, but Eddie was surfing on top of the wave of anxiety, trying to appear calm for both their sakes.

He smiled a bit at all the variations of “holy shit” he received from their audience.

Doctor Strange had that ‘concerned doctor’ look on his face.  Maybe he really was a doctor. “Mr. Brock, how long have you had an alien parasite?”

**“NOT A PARASITE!”**  Venom was visibly bristling, teeth snapping.

“Hey, Vee, calm down,” Eddie said, petting his Other’s neck.  The symbiote shrank a bit, resting its chin on his shoulder and wrapping a few black tendrils around Eddie’s torso protectively.  “It’s weird, it works, we’re happy. Have you considered, I dunno,  _ minding your own business _ ?”

“YOU WERE EATING PEOPLE.  HUMAN PEOPLE!” Boy, Stark was cranky today.

“Bad guys.  You know, the people prey on their fellow human beings?”

**“They think they’re at the top of the food chain.  WE ARE!”**

“Not helping, Vee.”  Eddie turned back to the Avengers.  “Pretty sure all of you—except for the kid—have killed to protect people.  Am I right? And did you even notice the alien invasion that  _ we _ stopped?”

Stark did a sarcastic double-take.  “I- I’m sorry,  _ you _ saved  _ us _ ?  And you expect that to just give you a free pass to eat criminals in public?  That is the craziest thing I’ve heard all week, and just  _ look _ at who I hang out with.”

Eddie was getting the distinct impression that the majority the Avengers were only here because  _ The Stark and Brock Show _ was more interesting than whatever was on their bookshelves or on Netflix.  Strange and Banner had some scientific interest, and Thor probably wanted a one-on-one rematch with Venom, but Captain America and the woman (whom Eddie was only just realizing was probably Black Widow) were just hanging back watching.  And Spider-Kid was just hanging.

“Actually,” Eddie said, “I don’t think you’d like my story.  It starts with a rich douchebag who thinks he’s above the law, and ends with him dying when his spaceship blew up.”

Spider-Kid looked hurt.  “Hey, be nice to Mr. Stark.  He does a lot of good work.”

“Sorry kid, but pissing off the rich and powerful is kinda my raison d'être.  I could tell you things that human beings do to each other would make your blood curdle.”   _ God, kid, those puppy dog eyes must be your superpower _ .  “So, can we leave?  Or at least call our lawyer?”

His audience started to wander away.

**“Hungry, Eddie.”**

“C’mon, guys.  At least get me a pizza?”

**“And chocolate!”**

…

…

…

“Does your lawyer know about your… alien friend, here?”

**“YES.”**

“Shit.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hadn’t written fanfiction in about a decade, but then Venom happened!
> 
> My internet has been shit, so I had to put Google Docs on my phone to get this online.
> 
> Feedback appreciated!


End file.
